


i'm covered in gold (put your heart on repeat)

by zeitgeistofnow (orphan_account)



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Trans Male Character, Trans Simon Lewis, another thing!, his trans-ness isn't a big deal but it's a thing, is that just my writing, or a reflection of how i view simon's character????, the writing is rambly but, they're artists, woah that's an actual tag???, you'll never know - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 07:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18806305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/zeitgeistofnow
Summary: simon's a mess in every section of his life, but more literally in art class. on an average day he leaves his fouth period covered in red, blues, grays, and everything in-between. it's a monday when his teacher is finally fed up and insists that he stay after to scrub the floor, like some kind of gender-bent cinderella. he doesn't expect to see anyone in the room, and he doesn't, until raphael shows up.





	i'm covered in gold (put your heart on repeat)

Raphael’s in Simon’s art class, where he paints things that Simon thinks are related to Catholicism. They’re beautiful paintings, even if Simon doesn’t know any of the saints or who Mary is. (Someone’s mom? Alec just sighs at him when he asks.) Raphael keeps everything around him perfectly tidy when he works, not a dot of paint. Simon’s teacher talks about how wonderful that is constantly, compares Raphael to everyone else in the studio. Today she actually specifically calls out Simon, whose thrift-store t-shirt is covered in a rainbow of paint specks, and it’s (justified, but) terrible.

He’s painting Luke Skywalker, but  _ pinup  _ Luke Skywalker, with his coverall sleeves tied around his waist and his  _ very, very  _ blue eyes and sweat dripping down his abs. It’s not quite porngraphic enough for his teacher to say anything, but she stands behind Simon and tsks. He doesn’t think she likes him.

“It’s an avant-garde critique of the portrayal of women in sci-fi,” Simon tells her, sticking his paintbrush behind his ear. It’s a proclamation made less impressive by the fact that he pronounces avant-garde wrong and gets a swipe of army green above his eyebrow. 

Ms. Belcourt raises her eyebrows that makes it clear that she doesn’t quite buy it, but she moves on. Alec leans over to Simon- he’s messing around with a lump of clay, like he has been for weeks now.

“Is it really?” He doesn’t quite manage to take his eyes off of the canvas, which Simon takes as a compliment.

Simon winces. “I told Izzy it was so that she’d get off my back about all the internalized-misogyny stuff I said back in freshman year-” Alec winces too, Simon thinks most of the bonding they’ve done over the last year has just been because they both agree that freshman Simon was an idiot- “but no, I just think that Luke was hot and that no one appreciates that enough.”

Alec coughs and grins, just a bit. “I’ve never thought about it.”

“Exactly, and now you have. My painting is serving its purpose.” Simon takes a painterly step back to evaluate his progress. He’s mostly only worked on Luke’s face so far, the rest of his body just a rough sketch. Next is the abs, and shoulders. Simon’s  _ shit  _ at painting shoulders. He takes a bracing breath, steps forward, and… his paintbrush finishes it’s slow but steady escape from behind his ear and paints a strip of green down Simon’s face. It gets in his  _ mouth.  _ He manages to laugh, and says to Alec, “At least it’s not made of arsenic anymore.”

Alec smiles bemusedly, and a little tiredly, at Simon and Simon nods back. He gets that even if he and Alec are kind of friends now, there’s definitely only so much Simon he can take. He starts to make his way to the sink, and that’s when Ms. Belcourt strikes. 

“Class, I hate to interrupt your work, but I’d like to call attention to Raphael’s area.”

Raphael stands patiently, his paintbrushes all handle-down in his paint water, which is (somehow) perfectly clear. This happens a few times a week and almost everyone in the studio tunes it out. Simon pretends to pay attention but just so that he has an excuse to stare unabashedly at Raphael.

Ms. Belcourt catches his gaze. “Ah, Mr. Lewis. You look interested in this- care to be part of the demonstration?”

Simon shakes his head and starts to hurry for the sink, but Raphael meets his eyes. Raphael is just barely smiling, but he looks unbearably amused, which is… a weirdly hot expression? It’s very distracting, in any case, and Simon trips over an easel and lands face-first in an abstract painting. It was a very not-dry, very colorful, very abstract painting, and now his face is a mirror image of it.

Ms. Belcourt looks shocked for a split second, then tsks. Simon really doesn’t think she likes him. “Let this be a lesson to you, class. Art requires dexterity not just with a paintbrush, but also with your feet. Mr. Lewis will be staying after class and helping tidy up the studio.”

Alec shoots him a sympathetic look and Simon frowns exaggeratedly back at him. Some of the army green paint cracks, and the new rainbow of pigment fills those cracks. 

“You’re like a really ugly pride flag,” Alec mouths and Simon laughs.

 

But Ms. Belcourt was serious about him stay after, and he has to cancel plans with Clary when she finds him after school. He’s not sure exactly what he’s cleaning as the painting wasn’t very badly damaged by his face, and no paint ever touched the floor. He still has carmine red in his ear, but he doubts Ms. Belcourt cares about the state of his face. Clary shrugs it off and mockingly salutes him when he starts in the direction of the art room.

“I’ll mourn for you!” She promises, and Simon rolls his eyes and grins. 

 

Ms. Belcourt locks him in the art room with a soapy bucket and a sponge and gestures at the paint speckled floor through the window to the hallway. Simon blinks at her and she walks away. 

There’s a stain of blue by the desk that looks a bit like an elephant, so Simon starts with that one, scrubbing first away the ears, then the trunk, then the body. Next is clay residue on a work table that isn’t shaped like much of anything. Then a confederate flag some ass doodled on the wall, near the ground. Then a tiny painting on the floor that Simon thinks might be of a mouse. Then Raphael slips through the door. 

He’s elegant even in his shock and recovers almost immediately from finding a good-for nothing nerd in what is apparently his after school occupation. (Simon guesses when it comes to Raphael’s opinions of him, but he doubts he’s far off base.) His watercolors, tucked under his arm a second ago, clatter against the ground and Simon dives to pick them up and hand them back to him.

“ _ Dios,”  _ Raphael says under his breath, sounding like a period drama lady about to faint. “What are you doing here, Lewis?”

Simon sits up straighter and drops the sponge. He says, in his best approximation of Ms. Belcourt, “Mr. Lewis, I expect a solid segment of this room spotless and that you manage to control yourself tomorrow in class.” Then he tsks to himself and grins up at Raphael.

Raphael hums. “Well, I have an assignment for class to finish, so I suppose we’ll have to coexist. Try not to trip over any more easels, Lewis.” He smiles to himself and Simon smiles up at him, a bit confusedly. 

 

He sets up his project in the corner of the room, sitting on a spinning stool and propping his canvas up on the easel in front of him. Simon scrubs the floor some more and marvels at how Raphael doesn’t, not  _ once,  _ spin idly around in the seat. He does chew his fingernails when he thinks, and he blinks more often than the average person, Simon thinks. His eyelashes are really long and dark, like Izzy’s, and it’s a wonder that they don’t ever get tangled with all the blinking he does. 

He’s only in the beginning stages of his painting, the outlines of person in armor, and some sketched lines that probably served as guidelines for something. 

Simon grabs a pottery tool to scrape a stubborn patch of acrylic off the floor and Raphael makes a quietly disapproving sound from behind him. 

Simon glances at him and Raphael looks away quickly, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.

 

He steps in a puddle of paint the next day. Someone in the last class was painting banners and they’d left it out, right in Simon’s path to his easel. It’s aquamarine and Simon doesn’t notice he’s tracking paint around until he’s walked to the sink to wash his face three times and gotten all the way down Luke’s left arm. Ms. Belcourt tsks and points out that he didn’t even finish cleaning yesterday and now he’s made an even bigger mess and he really ought to come clean it up this afternoon. Raphael, passing Simon on the way out of the classroom, mentions that he’s still going to be working on the painting after school. 

Simon takes solace in the fact that he won’t entirely be alone this afternoon.

 

“You’re doing it wrong,” Raphael says. He gently washed off the paintbrush he’s using and places on the counter, then walks over to Simon and folds himself down. He takes the sponge from Simon- his fingers are slender and his nails painted black. “You have to actually put effort into scrubbing- this is why you barely managed to clean a square foot yesterday.” He kneels on the floor next to Simon and the splotch of orange Simon had been working on dissipates in seconds. They both stare at the clean floor for a moment, Simon sprawling and taking up as much space as he can, the bottom of his shoe still blue-green and Raphael compact and wearing an outfit of perfectly clean, unmarked black. 

“Thanks,” Simon says a moment later.

“It was painful to watch you spend minutes on something that should take ten seconds at the most,” Raphael responds. He stands up gracefully and walks back to his painting. Simon watches his low heels click on the floor and doesn’t respond until it’s too late for his witty response to seem witty.

“Aw, you’re watching me?”

Raphael rolls his eyes.

 

Three days later his paintbrush flies from his grasp and hits a freshman on the forehead, then clatters to the floor and marrs the newly clean tile. Ms. Belcourt doesn’t even bother telling Simon to stay after school- it seems like it had just occurred to her that she can make Simon clean her floor, and now it’s just something that’s going to happen regularly. It’s a bummer, too, because Simon had these great plans to fifth wheel at dinner with Alec and Magnus and Clary and Jace. Of course, they didn’t  _ intend  _ for him to be the fifth wheel, but Izzy canceled at the last minute, and maybe Simon’s kind of glad he has an excuse. Also, Magnus winked at him when he said he had detention and Simon doesn’t know what that means.

Raphael is already painting when Simon makes it into the classroom and Ms. Belcourt is nowhere to be seen. Raphael has cheap drugstore earbuds (Simon knows that they’re cheap and from the drugstore because he has the exact same ones) and he only has one in when Simon opens the door.

“You managed to stay out of trouble for a few days, that’s commendable.” Raphael comments.

“Aw, missed me?” Simon throws open a cupboard and looks for the soap and sponge and all that stuff. He finds a pack of sponges, and the bucket for the soapy water, and the soap, but there’s… no soapy water in it?

“Your face is not something one would miss.” Raphael says and dabs at his painting.

“Yeah, well, my third grade girlfriend would say otherwise,” Simon maintains. “Also my fifth grade boyfriend. I’m quite the heartthrob, actually.” He drags the bucket and the soap over to the sink and turns to look at Raphael. 

Raphael’s ears redden and he shakes his head. “A veritable string of broken hearts behind you.”

“Truly,” Simon agrees. Raphael turns back to his art and Simon back to his cleaning. Well, what will be his cleaning, once he figures out how to get water into the bucket and soap into the water. He stands there, pondering the question, for maybe longer than he should.

“ _ Dios,”  _ Raphael breathes, finally looking up. “Can you not make  _ soapy water,  _ Simon?”

“I’ve never had to!” Simon protests.

“That makes nothing better, Lewis.” Raphael says. He stands up and walks over to the sink, picks up the dish soap. “Put the soap in the bucket.”

Simon waits for him to do what he’s saying he’s going to do. Raphael raises his eyebrows at him and holds out the soap. “What, Lewis? Can’t follow simple directions? You’re like a baby.”

Simon rolls his eyes. “I thought you were going to.”

“I’m not going to get this shirt wet. You’re going to follow my instructions, okay?” It’s not really a question, more of a command. Some tiny, dumb (okay, maybe not so tiny, but very, very dumb) part of Simon’s brain responds to that with  _ hmm hot  _ because maybe he has a thing for commanding people, and also maybe Raphael specifically. First and foremost, though, he does need to be able to make soapy water, so he takes the soap. 

 

Simon is very bad at making soapy water. By the time he’s ready to actually start cleaning, it’s maybe fifteen minutes until he can leave and he’s soaked enough to model for his pinup Luke. Of course, this was the day when he wore a white t-shirt, and it’s sticking to his torso like iron to magnets. His binder is a light gray, which means it’s not really obvious when his shirt isn’t mostly transparent, but his shirt… is. Obviously, he doesn’t  _ really  _ care if Raphael cares if he’s trans, because Raphael is just a random guy in his art class who happens to be very cute and nice and maybe Simon cares a bit. Either way, Raphael doesn’t say anything about it, just continues to point out Simon’s uselessness. He’s actually studiously not looking at Simon’s chest, or his non existent abs, which is a thing Simon’s found cis people do. Like if they ignore everything that suggests Simon might be trans, then there’s no chance of them being transphobic. It’s misguided, but Simon appreciates the effort. Sometimes. Usually only if it’s people he likes.

Raphael hasn’t escape unscathed either- his shirt is dotted with the places that Simon accidentally flung drops of water at him, and he eventually had to roll up his sleeves and help Simon with the “astoundingly simple, honestly Lewis” job. His ears are redder than they’ve ever been, the irritated blush spreading to the bridge of his nose. 

“Well, baby, looks like you’re finally ready to start. Maybe I can actually get something done in the next-” he glances at the clock. “Thirteen minutes.”

Simon does his best to wring out his hair and flushes at the nickname. “C’mon, don’t say you regret helping me.”

“I suppose I don’t,” Raphael huffs. “I’d ask your help packing up my painting materials, but I don’t trust you with any of it.”

“Probably the right decision.” Simon hops onto the counter and watches Raphael start to put away his things- everything goes in the right bins that Ms. Belcourt has labeled and that no one but her and Raphael use, his painting is carefully covered and put away, and doesn’t look up to meet Simon’s eyes  _ once.  _

They leave the art room together, walking three feet apart and not quite talking. Simon wants to, has the words that he’s going to say queued up on his tongue, but by the time he musters up the courage to say something, Raphael is out the main doors and leaving. “Have a good weekend, baby.”

“I- you weekend- You too!” Simon shouts at the closing door. He groans.

 

Monday he accidentally splashes Ms. Belcourt in the face with his water glass, and he manages to make soapy water in under fifteen minutes. Raphael begins to paint with skin tones. Wednesday he slips on wet clay that found its way to the ground and gets forest green all over the tile. Raphael actually talks to him Wednesday, tells him about his advanced math course while he spends fifteen minutes in the same square inch with fifteen shades of gray. 

Thursday he “accidentally” flicks Alec in the face with white paint and Ms. Belcourt says he needs to stay after Thursday  _ and  _ Friday. Simon doesn’t spend much of either day actually cleaning, instead sitting on the counter behind Raphael and watching him paint.

 

It becomes obvious on Monday that he’s painting a woman with armor on. She has ash brown skin and dark black hair peeking out from underneath her helmet. Simon thinks Raphael must have painted at home over the weekend, because it looks finished. Raphael rummages through a cabinet- he has to stand on the counter to reach it, which is adorable.

“What are you doing today? Looks fine to me.” Simon asks, spread out on the counter beneath him.

Raphael smiles mysteriously. “Making her golden.” He emerges from the cabinet with glue and a few sheets of gold leaf.

 

Simon has tiny specks of gold  _ all over him.  _ He’s almost as glittery as Magnus at this point, and it’s kind of cool, but it also keeps getting in his eyes and his mouth and he doesn’t want to spit them out because spitting is gross and he still wants Raphael to think he’s cool.

Of course, the other boy has managed to get absolutely no gold dust on his person, even as he finishes the painting. He dusts his hands before covering it in a sheet, just to rub in the fact that he doesn’t  _ need  _ to dust off his hands! He got out of his experience scott free, whereas Simon has to sit here looking like some kind of queer, jewish, knockoff Edward Cullen.

Which is objectively better than the real Edward Cullen, in Simon’s opinion, but that’s so far beyond the point.

Simon peels a piece of gold leaf off his forehead and throws it at Raphael. It flutters through the air and adheres to the tip of his nose. Raphael doesn’t notice, just grabs a bottle of tempra paint and squeezes it onto a palette, so Simon throws another piece of fake gold at him. Nothing. Another. 

“Hey. Hey, Raph.”

Raphael looks up, frowning. “What is it, Lewis?”

Simon throws another piece at him. “Who’s your painting of?”

Raphael doesn’t comment on the projectiles being thrown at him. His frown doesn’t leave his face as he mixes his paint. “Joan of Arc. I’d hope you’d at least recognize the name.”

“Zendaya dressed as her for the Met Gala last year, right?” Simon bluffs. The truth is, he knows exactly who Joan of Arc is. He feels awful that he hadn’t recognised her, but all the books he read had her as a white redhead and quite a bit more feminine than Raphael’s painting. He’d been obsessed with her all the same. Dressing as a man and defeating the british was all he’d wanted to do as a small, american trans boy.

Raphael sighs, long suffering. “Yes, she did do that. But Joan of Arc was actually…” Simon crawls along the counter to look over Raphael’s shoulder and Raphael shrieks and bats him in the face with the paintbrush. 

Which had paint on it. Paint that is now also on Simon’s face. 

There’s a moment where they both stare at each other, then Raphael smirks and Simon snickers and wrenches the paintbrush out of his hand. Simon, while far less nimble than Raphael, is also quite a bit taller than him and it only takes a moment before he’s sitting on the other boy, ready to extract his retribution.

At which point he realizes that his is  _ straddling  _ Raphael and that the other boy is sparkling and smirking up at him. Simon dabs Raphael’s forehead with the ruby red paint and Raphael’s face makes a valiant effort to blush the same color.

“I…” Raphael starts, pushing himself up on his elbows, and Simon cuts him off. By kissing him and wow he really is kissing Raphael and it’s very very nice and Raphael makes a noise somewhere in the back of his throat that is possibly the best noise Simon has ever heard. The kiss lasts only a second or two before Raphael breaks away, putting a hand on Simon’s chest.

“Sorry, baby, these tiles are not made for elbows.”

“Um, well.” Simon flushes. “My detention is over, so we could go somewhere less tile-y, if you wanted. Like, for dinner.” Never mind that the only places Simon’s going to be able to afford are probably tiled. 

“Asking me on a date, Lewis?” 

“I kinda hope that was clear.” Simon stands up and rubs at the back of his neck. Raphael gracefully pushes himself off the ground and stands very close to Simon.

“Sounds wonderful.” Raphael’s face is very close and their noses are almost touching and oh! They’re kissing again! What a nice development, and Simon very much wants to keep doing so, but he’s also, in Alec’s words, a little bitch. He grabs the paintbrush and paints a long line down Raphael’s face. 

Raph practically shrieks, then looks around for tools of retribution at Simon cackles.

 

“Mr. Lewis,” Ms. Belcourt sighs, “You seem to have managed to make my classroom even more of a mess yesterday afternoon.”

There’s definitely some truth in that statement. Simon looks past her to catch Raphael’s eye and Raphael winks at him. 

**Author's Note:**

> yoooooo i haven't written this much in a weekend in a weirdly long time!! i'm also working on some original fiction that i'm probably too proud of- you can read some of my other original work @the-stars-say-gay on wattpad, or come scream at me on tumblr at the same username. 
> 
> i hope you liked this!! comments and kudos make me happier than... [insert happy thing here i didn't think this through]. xoxo


End file.
